Awards Update Archive for December, 2016

Gurus o’ Gold: Doc & Foreign Faves

By The Gurus of Gold - Friday, December 30th, 2016

The Gurus are on vacation, but they left behind their thoughts about the short-list races of Feature Documentary and Foreign Language, offering up their personal preferences about both categories. And as always, Best Picture. Happy New Year to all. Oscar nomination voting starts in less than a week.

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20 Weeks To Oscar: The (Shock) Corridor

By David Poland - Thursday, December 29th, 2016

My problem with The Corridor is that the period has become desperate and grabby. The smartest and the most simplistic players are stuck playing the same game… using fake awards events (high and low) and all forms of screening/dining contraptions and terrible hackneyed advertorial that not even ad buyers expect to be read.

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Gurus o’ Gold: ChristmaChanukah Time!

By The Gurus of Gold - Friday, December 23rd, 2016

The Gurus answer the question on everyone’s mind… what are the best gifts The Academy could give us this holiday season? And, as always, the latest look at Best Picture, where there isn’t a lot of change. Happy Holidays!!!

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20 Weeks To Oscar: The Golden Goose & Those Lovely Eggs

By David Poland - Friday, December 16th, 2016

The illusion of free will that is foisted on Phase I becomes much more real in Phase II. Because the power of narrowing choices actually shifts to the Academy voters and away from the media and the consultants.

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Gurus o’ Gold: What Films Are On The Edge & Who Will Win Golden Globes?

By The Gurus of Gold - Thursday, December 15th, 2016

The Gurus tighten things up, with only 10 Best Picture picks. They ask, “What films are on the edge of being in or out of Best Picture contention?” Also, in honor of the Golden Globes nominations, The Gurus pick their winners. Only two of eight categories are unanimous, but all but Best Drama have overwhelming leads.

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20 Weeks To Oscar: #GlobesSoWhite

By David Poland - Monday, December 12th, 2016

The other three “black” films? Fences was good enough for its two big stars of color to be nominated. Loving was good enough for its two likely Oscar nominees to be nominated. Hidden Figures was good enough for its Oscar-winning star to be nominated along with, uh, Best Score.

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Gurus o’ Gold: Top 8 Categories A Few Days Before The Globes Nominations

By The Gurus of Gold - Thursday, December 8th, 2016

Thirteen Best Picture titles have votes from more than half the voting Gurus this week, after all the movies expected to be in play, aside from Passengers, have been seen. That is the field from which 7-10 will get Best Picture nominations. Scorsese’s Silence didn’t rise… but it didn’t fall either. Denis Villeneuve, Andrew Garfield, Isabelle Huppert and Janelle Monáe are on the rise.

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20 Weeks To Oscar: The Host & The Show

By David Poland - Tuesday, December 6th, 2016

Taking a little air out of the balloon is always a pleasure. But when you become self-mocking, the brand is being damaged… at least when the brand is the 800-pound gorilla in the category. And Oscar is that.

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Atlanta Film Critics Awards

By Ray Pride - Sunday, December 4th, 2016

Best Film: La La Land   Best Director: Damien Chazelle (La La Land)   Best Actress: Annette Bening (20th Century Women)   Best Actor: Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea)   Best Supporting Actress: Lily Gladstone (Certain Women)   Best Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)   Best Screenplay: Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea)  …

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DC Film Critics Nominate

By Ray Pride - Saturday, December 3rd, 2016

DC Film Critics Nominate

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Gurus o’ Gold: Directing, Animated, Screenplay

By The Gurus of Gold - Thursday, December 1st, 2016

This week, in a vote taken before the critics groups weighed in on Thursday, the Gurus take on Director, Animated Feature and the two Screenplay categories, in addition to the BP Top 10.

If there are any surprises, it is The Gurus’ unwillingness to take movies set in the 1960s very seriously or that the Top 5 Directors right now are all American.

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NOMINATIONS FOR THE 22ND ANNUAL CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARDS

By MCN Editor - Thursday, December 1st, 2016

FILM NOMINATIONS FOR THE 22ND ANNUAL CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARDS   BEST PICTURE Arrival Fences Hacksaw Ridge Hell or High Water La La Land Lion Loving Manchester by the Sea Moonlight Sully   BEST ACTOR Casey Affleck – Manchester by the Sea Joel Edgerton – Loving Andrew Garfield – Hacksaw Ridge Ryan Gosling – La La…

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon